Roy Moore might have to actually concede to Doug Jones now

Roy Moore.
(Image credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Roy Moore may have ridden his horse to the end of the road.

The office of Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R) announced Wednesday that it had received 5,333 total overseas and provisional ballots pertaining to the Dec. 12 special election between Moore, a Republican, and Democrat Doug Jones, who were vying to fill Alabama's open Senate seat. The race had been called for Jones hours after polls closed, but Moore had refused to concede, citing outstanding ballots that had yet to be counted.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Alabama state law stipulates that should the results of a race fall within 0.5 percent, an automatic recount would be triggered. As the Montgomery Adviser notes, even if Moore won all of the new votes, "Jones' margin of victory, currently 1.5 percent, would fall to 1.1 percent."

Moore's stunning loss in the deep-red state came after he was accused by several women of pursuing, groping, or assaulting them when they were teenagers and he was in his early 30s. The Moore campaign did not respond to request for comment from the Montgomery Adviser regarding the Wednesday announcement from Merrill's office, while a spokesman for Jones wrote: "This election has been over since Dec. 12."

Explore More

Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.